OK ... so a weak title. I'm basically trying to set up this news report about some whack job in Australia who used wooden stakes on an Australian airplane while trying to break into the cockpit.
According to an Australian newspaper:
"Conventional airport metal detectors failed to find the two 15cm wooden stakes allegedly wielded by the man at the centre of Thursday's armed attack aboard a Qantas jet."
Although 15 centimeters is more like bamboo knitting needles than a vampire stake, although it could be close to a tent stake. The article also says:
Federal Transport Minister John Anderson yesterday said all proposals for tougher action would be considered -- including body-length "pat-down" searches.Equally unable to alert security staff to passengers carrying plastic weapons, the detectors may give way to manual body checks.
"The privacy implications of patting people down are quite significant but we will obviously have to examine those matters," Mr Anderson said.
A friend of mine had been joking that flying should be like a spa -- you check your clothes at the door and you get into a robe and slippers for the duration of the flight. Between the news of the patdowns, and the nudist airline flights, we're converging on his humorous suggestion.
As for the attack itself:
A former member of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry helped foil the hijacking of a domestic Australian airliner yesterday.
Derek Finlay, 30, originally from Fort McMurray, but now living in the state of Tasmania, said his training from seven years in the Canadian army came in handy when he launched himself at the hijacker.
An unemployed computer analyst has been charged with the hijack offence and with stabbing two flight attendants with wooden stakes as he allegedly attempted to break into the plane's cockpit.
David Mark Robinson, 40, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court. If convicted he could be imprisoned for life.
| Airplanes | Security |
Zachary David Everett-Lane was born last night at 11:23 (or 23:23, which sounds much cooler). He was 6 lbs 15 oz and looks just like his big brother did when he was born. Mom and baby are both doing fine. It was a really quick labor -- started around 7, we got to the hospital around 10, and we never made it out of the exam room before the baby was born. More details to come -- I'm heading back in to Manhattan to see our new son.
| Parenting |
You may have heard of him back when MirCorp was big, he was one of the two co-owners. From the Chicago Sun Times:
Fate has either dealt an amusing trick or a unique opportunity. Consider a 38-year-old medical doctor (from Brown) who has matched this with a business career (MBA from Stanford) that has spawned enterprises that today are valued at a combined $1 billion and have been featured in national economic journals. Moreover, he is pledged to spend up to $15 million of his fortune on his campaign. Here is an antidote to dullness. He was born in New Delhi, India, has lived in DuPage since childhood, is a devout Sikh and sports a beard that produces a lean, intense-looking visage. His name is Chirinjeev Kathuria of Oak Brook--not exactly catchy--but his life story spans the launching of Medical Oasis Inc., positioned to become the premier chain of diagnostic imaging centers in the nation, to MirCorp, which became the first company to privately launch and fund space programs (sending the first citizen explorer, Dennis Tito, into space), and which is building the world's first private space station. If elected, Kathuria would possess a monopoly of firsts, including the first U.S. senator to wear a turban.
Note that Kathuria would not be the first Sikh congressman, although he would be the first extenally observant / turbanned and bearded Sikh congressman. The first Sikh congressman, who was also the first Indian-American congressman, was Dalip Singh Saund, who served from 1957 (?)-1962 in California. His story is quite interesting. He got a Ph.D. in Math from Berkely in 1924, one year after the supreme court ruled that a Sikh plaintiff couldn't become a citizen even though South Asians were categorized as Caucasians because they weren't white. [It's a fascinating legal case in which the justices argue that what is important is the common sense notion of who is white rather than the "scientific" (at the time) classification of race] In fact, his wife, a white American, lost her citizenship when she married him. Since the 1920s were a xenophobic time, he couldn't get a job using his math skills, even teaching his school. he became a businessman, and after becoming a citizen in 1949, he became a judge, which served as the stepping stone for national office.
| Sikhs |
I received this email from Jody Rosen of the New York Times about our blog post on his article:
Dear Ishbadiddle:A friend of mine directed me to ishbadiddle, thinking I'd enjoy Christopher Molanphy's comments about my recent Times piece on melismatic singing in pop music. My friend was right: I appreciated Christopher's kind and witty words and agree completely with his theory about Stevie Wonder's influence on R&B over-emoters.
Christopher got one thing wrong, though. The Jody Rosen who wrote the Times article is not the "Brooklyn-based critic Jody Rosen" of southsidecallbox.com fame. That Jody Rosen -- Jody Beth Rosen, to be precise -- is a very good critic and, I gather, a very nice young woman. (She and I once had a pleasant email exchange.) The Jody Rosen responsible for the Times article on melisma, various other Times articles about pop music over the years, and a book about Irving Berlin that three people read, is Manhattan-based and as ruggedly male as someone named Jody can possibly be.
You can imagine the pangs of despair I experienced at Christopher's repeated use of the pronoun "she." ("My one criticism of Rosen's superb article is that she does not fully explore who is to blame for this phenomenon, though she does hint at it.") I wish to make some good of this painful episode by reminding ishbadiddlers that history's Jodys include such manly men as President Carter's press secretary Jody Powell; two-time all-star Chicago Cubs catcher Jody Davis; and Jody Porter, the former lead guitarist for Fountains of Wayne and current leader of The Astrojet -- a rock star, of sorts, who I'm pretty sure gets babes. Moreover, in U.S. military slang, a "Jody" is a civilian lothario who preys on the wives and girlfriends of soldiers. This character is a fixture of the chants, or "Jody calls," that soldiers belt out while marching and training:
Ain't no use in calling home
Jody's got your girl and gone.
Ain't no use in feeling blue
Jody's got your sister too.Word up. Anyway...I (heart) ishbadiddle and I appreciate your giving me the chance to straighten out this little mess. I am moving to Red Hook in June, but I trust that, even then, readers will not mistake the lovely, lithe and sweet-smelling Brooklyn-based critic Jody Rosen for that burly rogue, Brooklyn-based critic Jody Rosen.
Love,
Jody Rosen
Manhattan
Sorry, Jody! (That's Mr. Rosen to you.) Chris says: Blame it on Google. And thanks for setting the record straight.
| Gender | Names | Jody Rosen |
Well, that's how "Ishbadiddle" got translated from English into Japanese and back into English by Excite -- Babelfish didn't even attempt it. Hey! That's my picture! Another article on NYC Bloggers, this one in HotWired Japan.
| Hotwired Japan |
Google news lets me catch big news stories which, for one reason or another, aren't getting any coverage in the US. There are a number of versions of this story. I have no idea if it is true. Here's a version of the story from the (London) Times :
Baghdad chief 'betrayed Saddam'Paris: A Special Republican Guard chief, who is a cousin of Saddam Hussein, ordered forces not to defend Baghdad after making a deal with the United States, a French newspaper said yesterday.
Le Journal du Dimanche cited an Iraqi source close to Saddam's former regime. It said that General Maher Sufian al-Tikriti left aboard a US military transport aircraft bound for a US base outside Iraq.
His departure, along with that of a 20-strong entourage, came on April 8 - the day before US forces swept into Baghdad, and after US Marines said that the general had been killed. He ordered his troops to lay down their weapons before he left.
An Arab diplomat told the paper that it was a CIA plot, planned much earlier. (AFP)
It looks like something close to a coup may have taken place in Iraq after all.
| Iraq | War |
If you want the coat Neo is wearing in the Matrix Reloaded, you can't buy it from a store, but you can go on the web and get this replica coat produced by this custom tailors shop ... in Nepal. They also do Harry Potter sweaters. Ain't globalization grand ?
| Clothing |
I ran across this on someone's blog as I was doing approvals for NYC Bloggers (sorry whoever it was, I didn't bookmark 'ya): Jeffrey Shallit, a mathematician at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada has figured out that the US should ditch the dime in favor of an 18-cent piece, in order to optimally make change with the fewest coins. You can read the article in Nature, or this article on the Mathematical Association of America's site, or if you really want to get into the math, the original paper.
What's missing of course, in all of this analysis, is the fact that the number 18 is a lucky for us Jews. It has the Kabbalistic significance of being the numeric equivalent of Chai, the Hebrew word for life. (We could call the new coin a "Chai" but people might think we were ordering that tea-drink-thingie at Starbucks or something.) So it's mathematically proven: the Jews are taking over!
| Kabbalah | Conspiracy Theories | Religion |
Adj: Being too busy with stuff to be able to blog about the stuff you're busy with.
Robot Stories: first a couple of stories that show that Stephen Hawking was right: robots are going to take over! First a story from Wired about a new visual recognition algorithm which while still under wraps, would reportedly help machines recognize objects by giving them a "digital signature". So seeing things would be less like translating Urdu and more like what we do when we recognize faces. The second story, from Times via Slashdot, is on a Georgia Tech researcher who's hooked up a rat's brain to a robot. Well, actually, it's more complicated than that: they've grown a brain in a vat, and hooked it up to a machine in order to give it stimulus and learn how the neural net develops and see if it can learn. When you don't give them any stimulus, the neural nets basically crash for lack of input. For a while they hooked up them up to computers, but hey, robots are so much more fun, right? The rat's brain in a vat could not be reached for comment. Since it had been disconnected from the computer stimulation and introduced to reality, it has taken to calling itself "Neo."
By the way, am I really stupid, or did anyone else fail to notice that "Neo" is an anagram for "One" (as in "I think he's the One")? A three-letter anangram, you'd think I'd have figured that one out by now. Well, it took me a decade to realize that "Gnip Gnop" was "Ping Pong " backwards.
Speaking of the Matrix... I should really put my queries on the Meaning of the Movie in another post. Well, we saw it, and yes the fight scenes were awesome, and it wasn't as good as the first one, but it kept us entertaining during and thinking after, and what else do you want for ten bucks? You can read Emily's thoughts over on her blog.
More to write... but later. Must get back to work. (Preview: Kabbalistic change, Code Orange, Network, Farewell to Buffy, and My Life as a Gadget Whore.)
| Robots | Mad Science | Language |
Seen recently on T-shirts in Midtown:
* "Millennium 2002". I know there were the folks who thought it began in 2000, and others who maintained it began in 2001, but 2002?
* "I ♥ NY More Than You". Yeah, right.
* "Showdown: Iraq. Hear We Come." With a map of Iraq and a picture of an F-16 flying toward Baghdad. Look, if you're going to wear a pre-war T-shirt, at least make sure it's spelled right, OK?
| Language | Iraq | War | Midtown Manhattan | T-shirts |
Hey, maybe there is a spoon.
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Variety show at PS 122, hosted by Jennifer Miller of Circus Amok. We especially liked The Pontani Sisters and The Fabulous Entourage.
Really, you have to hear the Folksmen performing "Start Me Up".
Now that was a good season. Maybe the best ever.
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The modern version of the Spanish prisoner scam is the Nigerian 419 scam, named after the article in the penal code that it violates.
"For those of you unfamiliar with this email scam, the basic idea is simple. Somebody purporting to be a Nigerian banker contacts you, offering a chance to earn some serious money. Often his bank will be looking after the considerable fortune of a deceased millionaire - from shipping magnate to former president. He says he needs a foreign bank account through which to launder the money - and in return for sending him your bank details for this purpose, he will give you a share of the spoils.
Of course those who fall for this scam never see these promised millions. Instead their bank accounts are often cleaned out once they have handed over all their details - which include bank account numbers, copies of their passport and drivers licence and phone and fax numbers - it is a simple identity theft, dressed up with a tempting lure for the gullible."
[To read more about the history of this scam, click here]
The magazine Silicom.com has an interesting article where one of their writers replied, just to see what happened. (The quotes above are taken from this article). The correspondence that follows is quite interesting.
| Africa | Identity Theft | Scams |
A good week for music-related effluvia on the net. First, anyone with even a passing interest in popular music simply must read this witty, dead-on New York Times article from Sunday's Arts section. (Hurry, free viewings will expire in a week and a half.) It's about melismata, the singing phenomenon that, in its overuse, is destroying modern pop singing. This has been a pet theory of mine for years, and while other critics have shared my disdain for the tendency of modern singers to egotistically overemote, until now no one has pinpointed the problem as expertly as Brooklyn-based critic Jody Rosen does here.
My one criticism of Rosen's superb article is that she does not fully explore who is to blame for this phenomenon, though she does hint at it. The usual, and rightful, suspects, Whitney and Mariah, are repeatedly invoked, but to me Rosen hits it on the head in this brief aside: "Stevie Wonder impersonations gone terribly wrong." My long-held theory is that the line in the sand between the old Soul Era of Brother Ray and Queen Aretha and the modern Melismata Era is Stevie, whose '70s work is without peer but who unfortunately taught an entire generation to oversing. Wonder got away with it because his material was so good (until "I Just Called to Say I Love You," of course) and because he wrote it all, which allowed him to understand innately how his heavy-handed singing could serve the songs. But as wave after wave of modern pop and R&B singers invoke Wonder and Songs in the Key of Life as their models of great music, I have decided that Stevie was to singing what Sgt. Pepper was to albums: an innovator of great artistic merit and dubious artistic influence. Like Pepper, Stevie taught everyone who came afterward all the wrong lessons.
The second article I stumbled across this week that I had to share was this BBC piece, "Sesame Street breaks Iraqi POWs," which is definitely a spit-out-your-Froot-Loops headline. Basically, the word from Iraq is that U.S. interrogators are using repeated plays of the themes from Sesame Street and Barney and Friends, along with heavy-metal songs like Metallica's "Enter Sandman," to compel testimony from their captives. And Amnesty International has declared that this may qualify as Geneva-violating torture!
Rightfully, the debate is centering on the question of repetition and cultural interpretation, not the merits of the chosen songs, which are frankly all over the map. "Enter Sandman" is at this point a rock/metal classic, no matter how you feel about Metallica -- it's played at baseball games, fer chrissakes. But metal is poorly received not just by aging parents and classical fans, but also by certain non-American populations, for whom the sound of thundering rock is akin to punishment, both cruel and unusual. As for Barney's "I Love You, You Love Me," I doubt anyone would argue that even two plays of this song amount to anything less than torture. But Sesame Street? Obviously I'm biased, because my memories of that theme date to just after the womb, but it's a pretty happy-sounding song that could only resemble agony after endless repetition; that chunka-chunka melody, those high-pitched kids' vocals - sure, it's grating, but not at first listen. Even John Lennon's "Imagine" would sound like torture after several dozen replays. (More torturous would be the version of "Imagine" sung last night by American Idol's lovable but melismata-addicted Ruben Studdard. Sorry, I'm digressing back to article #1.)
Finally, The Onion offers a sly bit of pop-culture satire this week: "'90s Punk Decries Punks Of Today." This is one of those Onion bits that's not laugh-out-loud funny but gets the tone so wonderfully right. It manages to lampoon punk snobbery, generational arrogance and the KROQ Weenie Roast all in one go. Of course, I shouldn't talk -- I bought the bulk of my punk records...um, CDs in the mid-'90s, and I think Sum 41 are lame, too.
From the Tuscon Citizen:
Avtar Singh Cheira, a 52-year-old truck driver, was shot twice by men in a red pickup near Bell Road and Ninth Street, police said.
The Indian immigrant, who has lived in the United States for 18 years, was wearing a turban as he waited for his family to pick him up from work about 9:20 p.m. Monday.
"I heard that voice say, 'Go back to where you belong to,' and at the same time I heard that shot," Singh said yesterday at a Valley hospital, where he winced with pain each time he moved his legs.
Singh was hit twice in the legs with bullets from a small-caliber gun. His youngest son found him, scooped him up, and waited for an ambulance. Police have no suspects.
"There is no doubt this is a hate crime," said Phoenix police Detective Tony Morales. "To think that this kind of ignorance is still out there and can fuel such an ugly racist action is just appalling."
The shooting is the second in the Valley targeting a member of the Sikh community since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Sept. 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi, 49, was fatally shot at his Mesa gas station. Police believe his killer mistakenly believed Sodhi was an Arab and shot him simply because of the turban he wore as part of his Sikh faith. The suspect, Frank Silva Roque, 43, is scheduled to stand trial June 24.
It's pretty clear that this is a hate crime since he wasn't robbed and nothing was taken. Community advocates have contacted local, state and federal authorities. The earlier shooter (Roque) actually tried to kill several other people w/ brown skin as well; hopefully they can catch the new attackers before anybody else gets hurt.
| Hate Crimes | Sikhs |
This just in: Science has conclusively proven that Politicians lie. What is great about the article, is that it (briefly) talks about why politicians lie, and why lying plays an important role in modern democracy. The author's conclusion? Not that politicians should lie less, but that they simply "need to be more honest about lying." My absolute favorite conclusion he reaches is that "the main cause of lying is increased probing by the public into areas that the government would rather not discuss candidly" and thus if "voters only asked fewer questions, politicians would tell them fewer lies."
Pretty funny stuff, but the more I think about it, there is some sense to what he is saying. Do we really expect politicians to speak honestly about subjects on which they have a stake? Or do we expect them to act in a partisan manner - sort of like a political version of the adversarial court system: neither side is truly honest, and we get to act as "judges" over which side is more persuasive/right?
The article, by the way, does not appear to suggest that a particular political party lies more than any other. Though they do note that Bill Clinton was essentially forced to lie about Monica Lewinsky because people asked about his sex life (unlike JFK's free pass with his mistress(es?)). Pesky people.
| Political Science | Lies |
Ledeen's ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. His views virtually define the stark departure from American foreign policy philosophy that existed before the tragedy of Sept. 11. He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America's manifest destiny. Consequently, he has become the philosophical legitimizer of the American occupation of Iraq.
Now Ledeen is calling for regime change beyond Iraq. In an address entitled "Time to Focus on Iran -- The Mother of Modern Terrorism," for the policy forum of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs on April 30, he declared, "The time for diplomacy is at an end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon."
"Total war not only destroys the enemy's military forces, but also brings the enemy society to an extremely personal point of decision, so that they are willing to accept a reversal of the cultural trends," Ledeen writes. "The sparing of civilian lives cannot be the total war's first priority. . . . The purpose of total war is to permanently force your will onto another people."
| Iraq | War |
We all know that truth is the first casualty of war. Still, I'm disturbed at the extent to which the American media was bamboozled. Even worse, they're barely paying any attention to the corrections as they come out. Take the Lynch story for example. Was she captured while fighting heroically, mistreated by her captors, and snatched out from the clutches of the Iraqi military in a dangerous raid ? Ummmmm ... it turns out, no. Read this story from the Toronto Star, but I'm sure there are other versions out there. It just doesn't seem to be in US papers even though it came out almost 2 weeks ago.
Here's just one quote to whet your appetite:
"The most important thing to know is that the Iraqi soldiers and commanders had left the hospital almost two days earlier," Houssona said. "The night they left, a few of the senior medical staff tried to give Jessica back. We carefully moved her out of intensive care and into an ambulance and began to drive to the Americans, who were just one kilometre away. But when the ambulance got within 300 metres, they began to shoot. There wasn't even a chance to tell them `We have Jessica. Take her.'"
| Jessica Lynch |
Ishbadiddle may be unavailable today from noon EDT to 8 pm EDT. Depends on whether our host is able to move the pages before they upgrade the web management console or not. Many apologies for the short notice.
Mike recently encouraged me to cross-post my blog content if I was so inclined, and I thought my current post might interest the music-loving/tech-loving Ish community: a review of Apple's iTunes Music Store. Actually, it's a rundown of the negatives on the new service – a "to do" list of improvements I'd like to see Steve Jobs implement. For more of an entry-level primer on the new iTunes, try this Walt Mossberg column.
You can also get to my blog via Molanphy.com; other recent posts include the latest installment of my CD-review series Rotations, plus some comments on Madonna and music video. Thank you and have a lovely day. Oh, and let me know if I should continue cross-posting here on Ish, or if you can find my blog yer own damn self, thankyouverymuch.
| MP3 | Web Tools | Reviews |
No, I'm not talking about the 75-comment long thread below. I'm talking about the bombings of the residential compounds in Riyadh. One of them was mine! In August - October of 1999, I lived in one of those compounds while negotiating financing for an oil refinery. For those of you watching the news, I was in the nice compound, with the pool. Not the ratty too-tall one that looked like a bad apartment complex.
I now see what's happening - they are after ME! I was in the World Trade Center just a few minutes before it was hit. I was in the Riyadh compound just four short years before it was bombed. And don't even get me started on the biological weapons they used on me in 2000 to get me sick for nearly a full year! Coincidence? You naive fools! It's me! I am the Chosen One! They are trying to get ME!
| WTC | 9/11 | Terrorism | Paranoia |
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Anyone want to see Incubus, the only horror film ever filmed in Esperanto? With a pre-Kirk William Shatner? Shot by the great Conrad Hall? And it has a curse? It's playing at BAM this Tuesday at 7 p.m.; leave a comment if you'd like to join me.
Update: Colin points out that the screening clashes with the penultimate Buffy, so I'll just have to settle on putting this in my Netflix queue. Given the length of the list, though, I may not actually see it until 2006 or so.
| Language | Esperanto |
Those of you who remember the chilling story of Chuck Hagel and the business of electronic voting machines will be pleased to note that his company is releasing a new voting achine that leaves a paper trail.
In response to concerns raised by election officials and security-minded techies, one of the largest makers of touch-screen voting machines has introduced a prototype capable of producing paper ballots.These machines will only be installed if people get on their local governments to demand them. So please contact your representative (find numbers here) or your local county board of elections and do so. Read the chilling story (linked to earlier, but whatever: it's here) for reasons why you should get right on this.Developed by Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Nebraska, the machine is currently in beta testing, with plans to make it commercially available by July.
| Diebold |
From the web site "Girls gone wilder"
Get it ? OK, so it's a web site built around one line joke. I still thought it was funny.
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Somebody actually did the monkey experiment. They call it "NOTES TOWARDS THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE". Here's from Yahoo news on the subject:
In a project intended more as performance art than scientific experiment, faculty and students in the university's media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques.Then, they waited.
| Shakespeare | Weird Science |
This is too good to pass up, even though it will make you do some scrolling: "Baby Milk Action," a British group that promotes breastfeeding, recently took UNICEF to task for its joint partnership/sponsorship deal with McDonalds.
While unrelated to the UNICEF deal, protesters used these billboards running in Austria and Italy to portray McDonalds as "a company known for its aggressive promotion of foods that contribute to ill health and poor nutrition both in industrialised and non-industrialised countries." The ads can be found about 2/3 of the way down the page.
By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that the "Hamburgler" is being recast as the "Hamgroper" to support the campaign.
| United Kingdom | Food | Milk | McDonald's | Fast Food | United Nations | UNICEF |
For my legions of adoring fans who use this blog to track my daily life -- well, you're pretty disappointed, aren't you, because I don't journal here much. But fear not! Here's some good news in the world of Mike: I've got a job! Since being laid off in January from Project Renewal, I haven't been looking for a permanent gig, since we didn't know if we'd be moving or not. Now that it looks like we'll be in New York for the foreseeable future, I've started thinking about what's next. And what better place to go looking for a job than the 3rd Street Playground?
Continue reading "And now, for some good news..." » 
According to the League / DC Comics web page:
" In this issue, a League member dies! As Allan and Mina meet a mysterious doctor and witness his miraculous experiments, the Martian attack of London intensifies. Meanwhile, serious scores are settled once and for all. Plus, for your reading pleasure, an additional almanac feature takes you to even more fantastic places."
Also, here's the site for the upcoming movie.
| Comics |
I thought this story was interesting. It was reported by a Christian News Network, and hasn't found mainstream circulation yet, but it was covered by Fox news, so the conservatives are listening.
John Walsh was the originator of "America's most wanted". Tiffany Hyatt Theriot is a survivor of rape and a gun owner who agreed to appear on the show. Ms. Theriot says that only moments before shooting began that she couldn't mention that she had been raped by a cop "for fear of damaging Walsh's relationship with the law enforcement community"
In an exclusive interview with CNSNews.com, Tiffany Hyatt Theriot said she was told only moments before taping for the April 29 episode of the program began that she could not identify even her attacker's profession.
"John didn't want me to mention that I had been violated by a cop," she said.
Theriot said she was specifically instructed by Jennifer Ulrich, one of the show's producers, not to make any reference to who had sexually assaulted her.
"Oh, by the way, you can talk about the rape, but don't mention that he's a cop. John doesn't want you to," Ulrich reportedly told Theriot. "John said: 'No, we don't want to talk about bad cops.'"
Theriot's account of the events is supported by two of the other women who appeared on the program with her and were present during the conversation.
"It was after their meeting with John that they decided they were not going to let it be known that he was a cop," said Maria Heil, the national spokeswoman for the Second Amendment Sisters, a group that promotes self-defense options for women.
"They didn't tell her that until right before we were starting to tape," Lisa Marquez, a survivor of domestic abuse by a former spouse, recalled. "Jennifer came back and said, 'We're sorry, you can't say that [he is a law enforcement officer]."
[then, a bit later in the article]
Repeated calls to the publicity office for the "John Walsh Show" seeking comment on the allegations in this article were not returned.
BTW -- I'm not anti-cop, I'm anti rapist. I'm posting a link to this article, and excerpts from it, because the political dynamic interests me since Walsh is a darling of the right but (in another part of the article) he's accused of sandbagging the women by setting them up as patsies in a pro gun-control show. This is the part that Fox news picked up on, they didn't say anything about Walsh being afraid to alienate the law enforcement community.
| America's Most Wanted | Police | Second Amendment | Rape |
I am officially out of our regular Survivor pool (we pull names out of a hat for $5 each at the beginning of each season. If your person wins the game, you get the pot). I figured I was toast when I pulled out the name of Christy Smith, who just happens to be the first deaf person to ever participate on Survivor. "Great," I figured, "in a communications-based game where the weak are voted off early, I'm sure the young deaf woman is going to really go far." Shame on me though - Christy had a good personality, some decent survival skills, an outdoorsy skill-set, and did a nice job with dealing with her handicap while succeeding in the game. She actually ended up getting voted off just this last week to come in 6th - beating out 10 people with 20/20 hearing (or however you measure it).
Which makes it all the more tragic that she has come under fire from some segments of the deaf community for her participation.. Specifically, she is being criticized for lip-reading and speaking with other contestants, rather than signing. Seems that, by lip-reading, some feel she is not being "deaf friendly." Of course, some thoughtless people pointed out that it would have been rather stupid of her to go into the competition using sign-language only, in light of the fact that none of the other contestants understand it.
The remaining contestants have much more daunting disabilities: they all lack either brains, personality, or both. Personally, I am rooting for Matthew von Ertfada. Who has "von" in their name these days?
| Political Correctness | Deaf |
Patrick writes:
Last weekend, Bush said "With a robust package of at least five hundred and fifty billion dollars in across-the-board tax relief, we will help create more than a million new jobs by the end of 2004." As is pointed in this New Yorker article, $550,000,000,000 / 1,000,000 = about half a million dollars a job.
Wouldn't it be far more efficient to simply give 50k to ten million unemployed people? We could do this every year, just like the tax cut. Sound unfair? It is. But not any more or less fair than arbitairily cutting someone's or some corporation's taxes. And those ten million people will probably spread the money more evenly than the wealthy and the corporations thus having a greater impact on the economy. Think about it.
